Mitt Romney’s new book, No Apology” The Case for American Greatness apparently makes the claim that “government is calling the shots on every major decision at GM, including which plants to expand and which to close.”

White House spokesman Matt Lehrich told the Detroit News: “While the president will continue to monitor the taxpayers’ investment in these companies, he has enough on his plate to have no interest in running them. Decisions and management are handled by the company alone.”

Payne lists the ways in which Washington isn’t running GM.:

The Obama administration forced GM into Chapter 11 last March and rejected its first restructuring plan as inadequate.

The Obama administration fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner.

The Obama administration appointed new GM board chairman, Ed Whitacre.

The Obama administration forced GM to reverse a decision to build its new small car in Asia. To satisfy UAW demands, the car will be built in Orion Township, north of Detroit.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) strong-armed GM into keeping open a facility slated for closure in his district.

And just today, the Obama administration GM announced that it would discontinue the gas-hungry Hummer.

Makes sense to me. Once again, Obama’s ideology trumps the facts. He believes firmly that oil and gas are dirty and evil, that “clean green” policies will save the planet, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Or perhaps it is just payback for the environmental organizations that supported his campaign. The Chicago Boys are very big on paying back your supporters. It’s called “crony capitalism.” Used to be called “graft.”

Before yesterday’s election, when Obama was trying to scare up votes for Martha Coakley’s floundering campaign, he warned Democrats this election was a referendum on him and his agenda. Now that even liberal Massachusetts has rejected his agenda, Obama says Brown won because people are angry with…I kid you not… President Bush…

The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office; people are angry and they’re frustrated; not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.

The anti-business mindset . . . is worthy of a pampered adolescent who is searching for a cause with which to display his unique moral sensibility. It is not worthy of an adult who should be able to use his imagination, if not actual experience, to appreciate the extraordinary human effort that has gone into creating the delightful tools that we daily take for granted. On my desk sit various humble objects—a tiny clock, a stapler, a paper clip box, a Lucite cook book stand for holding up drafts and other papers while I type. Each object represents a fractal geometry of complexity, composed as it is of parts that themselves require enterprise to manufacture, assemble, and deliver, all born along on waves of energy and infrastructure to which yet another set of entrepreneurs contributed. The fact that all of those distributors and manufacturers tried to make a profit does not detract from the fact that they offered goods which enhance our lives. . . .

It is the ingratitude that kills me the most among anti-business types. The materials that furnish a single room in an American home required daring, perseverance, and organizational skill from millions of individuals over generations. I hope they all got filthy rich.

The California Health and Human Services Agency is ending mammogram subsidies for low-income women under age 50. Under the old rules, women unable to pay could get a subsidy for annual breast-cancer screening beginning at age 40.

The decision by the State of California, which takes effect Jan. 1, follows a federal task force recommendation last month that mammograms before the age of 50 are not generally needed. As Carly Fiorina notes, the task force does not include any oncologists or radiologists, but simply a bunch of bureaucrats.

HHS Secretary Sibelius, noting the outcry, hastened to say that the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommendations were not regulation, and they really didn’t have any say.

California public health linked the change to the Task Force advisory and also to California’s budget woes.

Breast cancer is a high-profile disease. Most women know someone who has died of breast cancer. The only appeal from a government decision is strong opposition. Congress takes note of opposition if it is loud enough. But many diseases and conditions are not high-profile, and cost a lot, and under ObamaCare the guidance will not come from your doctor, but from statistics gathered by bureaucrats to see what is cost-effective.

Democrats claim that they will increase preventive care to control costs. Studies show that preventive care will not control costs, but increase them. Democrats don’t know anything whatsoever about controlling costs, or budgeting. The current health-care bill clearly demonstrates this.

American medicine has always been about saving lives. Democrat health-care reform is, first of all, about control. To get that control, they have divided the electorate into groups to whom they promise favors. Planned Parenthood and feminists demand paid abortions; members of the Democrat caucus opposed to abortion, demand no paid abortions or they will vote against the bill. Trial lawyers are second only to labor unions as Democrat donors. No tort reform, and extra goodies for the unions. Pleasing everyone means very high costs. Democrat health-care reform becomes about saving money, and saving money becomes about rationing, because the costs are going to be very high, and rationing is all that’s left.

Republican health-care reform is about individuals, not groups. They look at where the real problems are in our current health care, and advocate solving the problems before attempting drastic reform. Doctors freely admit that they practice defensive medicine, ordering more tests than necessary just to be on the safe side for fear of lawsuits. and nobody really knows how much this costs, but it’s a lot.

Insurance costs differ widely in different states because of requirements imposed by insurance commissioners and legislatures. Opening competition to insurance companies across state lines would bring costs down sharply. Competition always does. Bringing the cost of health insurance policies down will make health-care affordable for far more people. Republicans have all sorts of good ideas. Correcting the things that are wrong first seems far more sensible than trying to rearrange a big chunk of the economy, with no idea whether any part of it will work at all.

Owens told voters he did not believe a public option was appropriate, he said he was opposed to cuts in Medicare, he said he was opposed to taxing health care benefits, and said he was opposed to increasing taxes on the middle class.

But now that he has been sworn in, this new weasel among weasels has pledged to vote for the Pelosi bill, which:

contains a public option.

cuts Medicare.

taxes benefits, and

increases taxes on the middle class!

That’s four campaign promises broken in his very first hour! When dealing with a group as reliably dishonest as the Democrat party, it’s hard to plumb new depths of dishonesty, but congratulations NY-23! Your new congressman may have set a new record!

She doesn’t WANT Americans to be able to read about the vast amount of power she is going to assert over them, the vast amount of money she is going to steal from them, or the vast amounts of liberties this bill will destroy. She is changing America from a nation of people with a government to a government with a people. She is intentionally regulating the private health care industry out of business, so that as then candidate Obama promised, in 5 to 10 years, all Americans will be forced onto government run health care, which Democrats believe people will elect them to control. And that’s what it’s all about. They don’t care about your health. They blocked amendments that would make them have the same care. They care about power and control.

Have you called your representatives yet?

They intend to vote on this biggest-power-grab in American history by Saturday. Make sure you tell your representatives what you think of it. If you are ready to work to defeat anyone who votes for it, be sure you tell them that.

Particularly if your representatives are on this list of targeted, vulnerable Democrats. Call, get your family and friends to call. Blue Dog Democrats are starting to truly worry about their jobs after Tuesday’s election results — tell them they are right to worry. Polls show that a large majority of Americans do not want this bill, and they feel very strongly about it, much more strongly than the minority of Americans who support it. Call often!

My congressman is already voting against it, so I have called vulnerable Democrats in neighboring districts to tell them that if they vote for this bill I will come volunteer in their districts to make certain they lose their jobs.

This is the last chance to kill the bill in the house. I hope everyone will call!

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she’s prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that’s what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a “critical milestone,” may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.

The political incentive will always be for government to expand benefits and reduce cost-sharing, trampling any chance of giving individuals financial incentives to economize on care. Essentially all insurers will become government contractors, in the business of fulfilling political demands:”There will be no such thing as “private” health insurance.

All of this is intentional, even if it isn’t explicitly acknowledged. The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility. Mr. Obama’s own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back “public option” entitlement program is so that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.